Friday, November 6, 2009

More on testing (part II)

In my latest push to test more, I've been learning some things. Namely, just how much testing can show you. Testing really illuminates bad code. Bad code is hard to test. It might not have been that bad, but just some slight rule bending is enough to make code really hard to test.

So, getting back to the Law of Demeter. It's most easily summarized as:

At the end of the day, it's just about proper encapsulation if you ask me. Friends to me are direct dependencies, i.e. objects that are relied or operated on.

When a class A needs another object B (or is made to operate on object B), it should need it because of object B, not because of something in another object C that's in B. That violates encapsulation and exposes the internals of B. B then can't be refactored, because A relies on C.

Now, it's reasonable for A to operate on things inside B, as long as that is where they live and they art a part of B. Testing makes the distinction obvious, because if the access is proper, then exercising and testing the code is simple. If the access is stretching further than it should, then testing will be noticeably more work.

Mocking frameworks can make testing easier in these situations, but refactoring is probably still necessary. I found it necessary in some code I was working on this week, though I would call it gentle refactoring. It felt natural, and really wasn't a lot of work. I am still finding the tests hard to write, but I will keep at it.

I'm one day away from surviving writing daily for my first week of National Writing month. It's been a learning process so far. I'm rambling and not really cleaning up my writing yet - it's intentional so I can just focus on writing regularly. Hopefully at some point it will sound interesting.

I am noticing I have a lot to learn, and a lot to write about testing. I will continue to do so, but I think on the weekend I will sidetrack to some general computer stuff. Most notably I want to talk about my latest PC building escapades, and how much it has really restored my enjoyment of computer use in my spare time.